Welcome back to the BPD symptoms series! Today's is all about emotional dysregulation or 'mood swings', one of arguably the most stressful and distressing symptoms of borderline personality disorder, and the most recognised. From a quick google search, emotional dysregulation is defined as the following;
Emotion Dysregulation may be thought of as the inability to manage the intensity and duration of negative emotions such as fear, sadness, or anger. If you are struggling with emotion regulation, an upsetting situation will bring about strongly felt emotions that are difficult to recover from
Basically, those with BPD often struggle to regulate their emotions and feel them as rationally and as intense as a 'regular' person would, instead of feeling happy, sad, nervous etc, we feel elated, depressed and incredibly anxious, think of it as emotions times by a thousand, and happening every few hours, or minutes rather than every few days or one mood change a day to a 'regular' person.
To someone without BPD, you may feel regularly stable the majority of the time, and then one day you see something that upsets you, you have a little cry, talk about it, accept it, move on and go back to your regular stability fairly soon. Someone with BPD however, has a day that typically goes like this; (based on my actual day today, one of many)
You wake up, you feel unsettled in a way you can't describe to others. Something in your bones doesn't feel right, it feels on edge, tightened, and you know today is going to be rough. You get some info on your financial state, and begin to sob in bed uncontrollably, you can't wake your boyfriend because you want to let him sleep, you panic over the news, and then decide to try and get over it so you pick up the hair dye and change your look as you planned to do. You go about your day feeling still on edge, but ever so lightly bouncy, you can do anything! Go for a run tomorrow? Absolutely! Do the food shop today no problems? Of course! Manage a whole month on barely no money and be okay? Why would that be a problem?
Your boyfriend is up and about and you instantly jump on him, "wake up!" you think, it's time to play! Running around the house, playfully tapping him, he says "calm down" to you, why would you need to calm? Why would he think that? You're happy, isn't he happy you're happy? But he knows what's coming, it's time to do the food shop, and the knot's in your stomach, the lump is in your throat and you don't want to talk. "Meg, can you just wait for me to grab this?" But you can't just wait, you need to get going, to keep moving, before the anxiety hits you, before the panic inside you reaches up your throat and grabs the painful lump in there for itself. "no! let's go" you snap, why doesn't he understand? Why can't he feel the way i do? You get to the car, a bounce back in your step, "let's go to aldi whilst we're out shall we? May as well get some bits" the moments of anxiety forgotten, you bop and sing your way to the next store, where the cycle repeats itself.
And you're home. You feel a bit more relaxed, maybe the mood swings are over for today? It's been a bit intense and hard so far, but it's over now! You're fine, you're playing animal crossing on the sofa and nothing can go wrong. You facetime your family, you facetime your friends, it's pub quiz night - corona lockdown night! You've had a great time, but didn't someone make that one comment? They must have meant it, do they hate me? Have I done something wrong? Of course I did, I'm a terrible person, these people don't want to be my friend, they must be lying to me. Oh god, the tears are falling, you turn to your boyfriend, tell him you love him and, the tears are flowing now, giant sobs erupt from your mouth, he drags you onto the sofa "what's wrong baby?" but there is nothing wrong. That friend didn't mean it, it was a joke! But what about the future, when coronavirus lockdown is over and you move home? Patrick won't be there, oh god, he's not going to be there. You're crying harder now, the sobs uncontrollable, why are we crying again? Shouldn't I be replying to my friend, checking instagram, checking how my blog post went down from today? No? Oh, I have to keep crying, but why? Why is everything so loud? And then my hands are banging on my head, "make it stop, make it stop!" I don't understand, I thought we were fine? But we're rocking ourselves on the sofa, crying and wailing, one hand holding Patricks, the other grabbing fistfuls of hair, trying to pull it out, maybe if I pull out my hair this will stop? Maybe if I punch myself in the head this will all go away! Fast forward twenty minutes and I'm in bed with Patrick, "can I pop your spots?" "only if I can tickle you" and you're giggling and laughing, what on earth happened earlier? That wasn't me. Then Patrick leaves, you're scrolling through your socials and the tears are falling again. Why do I have to be like this? I'm so tired. I just want to go to sleep.
You might have read that and thought, "wow, bit long, bit dramatic", welcome to our lives. Our lives are long, are emotions are dramatic, are moods are erratic and we're ever so slightly going insane. At least that's how it feels. Everything feels a certain way, and it's rarely good. Anger feels like a deep burning pit of rage, and sadness feels like there is no way out, only depression and hopelessness. Happiness feels like being high on life, nothing can bring you down, you can do anything, and anxiety feels like you will never accomplish anything, you will sit and wallow in despair about what could be forever.
These emotions run deep within us, we can feel them in our soul, in our bones, our very being. We don't ever just "feel a bit down" we feel the deep worthless pits of depression run through us, our blood turning icy cold as it dawns on us we will never feel the warmth again. We don't just get a bit miffed, we feel the burning rage of anger bubble and boil through our veins, the need to punch, hit, throw, smack something desperately running through our minds to fulful the need of anger.
And rather than feel all these emotions few and far between, we feel them all. Sometimes all in the space of a day, or all in the space of a few hours. And it's painful. It hurts our sensitive souls, we want to feel happiness, feel the elatedness we get ever so rarely, and hold onto it. But the mood must swing, and until we learn to wield these emotions with therapy and a lot of time and patience, this is how life is.
Meg x
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